SYED MOHAMMAD KHAN Vs. GOVERNMENT OF ANDHRA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are appeals against the judgment of our learned brother Bhimasankaram, J,, in a batch of petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India filed by the various appellants for the issue of writs of mandamus or other appropriate writs directing the responent to forbear from enforcing the orders directing the appellants to quit the State within a prescribed date.

(2.) The material facts are similar in all the appeals. It would be sufficient therefore, as the learned Judge did, to state the facts in Writ Appeal No. 53 of 1957. The appellant was born on 5th October, 1912, in the Village of Thukhayi, Tehsil Barshore, Taluk Pishin, Quetta District in Baluchistan, which was formerly a part of British India. In 1940, he left his native place and settled down at Kowur, which was then part of Madras State and is now part of Andhra Pradesh. He started business in that place and was eking out his livelihood. He married at Kowur one Amirunnisa, whose father was a permanent resident of that place and was employed in Government service, and his two children weie born and bred up there. He purchased a site and constructed a house worth about Rs. 10,000 and he has also been doing lorry transport business. He alleges that, after the division of India, under pressure from the local Police and without proper guidance and appreciation of his citizenship rights, he applied for a passport and received one bearing No.070443 unde the seal of the High Commissioner for Pakistan in India, New Delhi, dated 7th March, 1953, valid upto 6th March, 1958. He also states that he was required by the local Police to make an application for visa to regularise his tay in India but the respondent refused to grant visa. By an older, dated 7th April, 1955, the respondent directed him to quit the State by 30th April, 1955. The affidavits filed by the other appellants in the connected appeals also contain silmilar allegations. They were also directed by the respondent by separate orders to quit the State. On the basis of the above facts, the aforesaid writs were filed and they were disposed of by a common order by Bhimasankaram, J. Before Bhimasankaram, J., it was contended that the appellants were citizens of India within the meaning of Articles 5 and 6 of the Constitution of India, that the mere obtaining of a passport from Pakistan, which was not a foreign State within the meaning of the Constitution, did not have the effect of depriving them of their citizenship and that they applied for the passpoit under the mistaken impression that persons born in the area now forming part of Pakistan were not citizens of India. Bhimasankaram, J., found that the appellants were citizens of India and that they did not voluntarily acquire citizenship of Pakistan by the time of the commencement of the Constitution. But the learned Judge held that there was an automatic statutory cesser of citizenship by virtue of section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, which came into force on 30th December, 1955. On that basis, he dismissed the petitions but presumably because the said Act came into force only after the petitions were filed, he did not make any order as to the costs of the petitions. The petitioners have preferred the above appeals.

(3.) The arguments of the learned advocates for the appellants could be better appreciated if the relevant provisions of the Constitution of India, the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the rules made thereunder are lead at this stage. The said provisions, omitting the immaterial portions thereof, are as follows :